Quinoa Breakfast Casserole with Andouille and Greens

It’s all about the proteins with this breakfast casserole. Between the eggs, quinoa and some spicy Andouille, you’re getting quite the protein punch. Add a bunch of beet greens for even more healthy goodness! Don’t have (or don’t like) beet greens? Use a bunch of kale or chard instead. Can't find Gruyère? White cheddar or Monterey Jack would also taste great.

Quinoa Breakfast Casserole with Andouille and Greens 
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
8 ounces andouille sausage, cubed
1 bunch beet greens, chopped
1 cup cooked quinoa
8 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup grated Gruyère

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking dish (I used an 8-by-8 glass dish) with butter or non-stick spray. Heat olive oil in a frying pan or skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and cook for about a minute, until fragrant. Add Andouille and cook until browned, 4-5 minutes. Add beet greens and quinoa to the pan and cook for another minute or two. Add mixture to baking dish, followed by eggs. Top with grated Gruyère and bake for 20-25 minutes, until eggs are set.

Make-Fast Mondays: Bratwurst with Beans and Greens

I’ve been firing up the oven a lot lately, the direct result of a long string of gloomy, rainy days (but please keep it coming, El Niño). Chase the gray away by making this delicious, cozy, quick meal!

Bratwurst with Beans and Greens 
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons minced garlic
12 ounces bratwurst or smoked sausage, sliced (I used Saag’s Natural Chicken Bratwurst)
3 cans white beans, drained and rinsed
3 cups diced tomatoes (from two cans; you’ll have a little bit extra)
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 cups chopped greens (I used a mix of kale and spinach)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a skillet or other oven-proof pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and cook for a minute. Add sausage and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add beans, tomatoes, smoked paprika, thyme and pepper flakes. Cook for another 3-3 minutes so everything’s nice and warm. Remove skillet from heat and stir in the greens. Season with salt and pepper, then put skillet in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.

Make-Fast Mondays: Merguez Pita Pizzas

Have you ever tried merguez? It’s my new favorite sausage and one I recently discovered thanks to a vendor at our local farmers market. This spicy lamb sausage tastes great grilled, and it’s also fabulous on these single-serving pita pizzas.

Merguez Pita Pizzas 
½ pound merguez, casings removed
1 cup tomato sauce
2 tablespoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons garlic powder
½ cup thin-sliced red onion
½ cup feta
4 pita rounds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. While oven is heating, brown sausage in frying pan over medium heat, using spatula or large spoon to break meat into crumbles. Remove from heat drain fat from pan. Place two pita rounds on two baking sheets. Combine tomato sauce, oregano and garlic powder in a bowl and whisk with fork until blended. Divide sauce among the four pita rounds, followed by the red onions, feta and merguez. Bake pizzas for 15 minutes, remove from oven and serve.

Make-Fast Mondays: Speedy Sausage Skewers

Throw a couple additional items in your shopping cart and you’ve got a great, grilled dinner in your future. The sausage is already cooked and doesn’t need to soak in any marinade to pick up flavor. Grilled veggies taste great on their own, and even better with a little dash of seasoning.

It’s worth noting that I use metal skewers because why waste money with one-and-done bamboo skewers? I’m also a big fan of flexible metal skewers, which seem to hold at least double the food as a regular skewer.

Don’t have a gas grill or don’t feel like cooking al fresco? Heat a little olive oil in a large frying pan and stir-fry the sausages and vegetables for a few minutes over medium-high heat.

No matter how you prepare this meal, it’s going to taste nice and springy with some pasta salad (no shame in buying some at the deli counter) or rice pilaf (which you’ll want to start before skewering the sausage and vegetables).

Speedy Sausage Skewers 
12 ounces cooked chicken sausages, cut into one-inch slices
1 large red bell pepper, cut into one-inch pieces
8 ounces white or brown mushrooms
Creole seasoning (or favorite spice mix)

Prepare your grill (medium-high heat did the trick). Alternate sausage, peppers and mushrooms on skewers. Place skewers on platter and dust skewers with seasoning. Grill until sausage and veggies have some good grill marks but aren’t overly charred, turning skewers occasionally, about 8-10 minutes. Remove sausage and vegetables from skewers and serve.

Giving chicken soup a little kick

Homemade chicken soup is such a simply wonderful meal. It’s a great comfort when you’re under the weather, but a warm bowl full of chicken, broth and other goodies is delicious no matter how you feel. The next time you want a little twist on a traditional favorite, give this recipe a try.

Kickin’ Chicken and Rice Soup
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
2 celery stalks, ends removed, diced
1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 tablespoon Creole seasoning
1 cup dry white rice, rinsed
1 cup diced cooked chicken
1 cup (7-8 ounces) diced smoked sausage (I used one of these guys)
8 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons tomato paste
8 ounces large shrimp, butterflied and separated

Heat olive oil over medium heat in large, heavy pot. Add garlic, onion, carrots, celery and bell pepper and sautée for a couple minutes. Stir in Creole seasoning, rice, sausage and chicken and sautée for a couple more minutes. Add broth and tomato paste. Bring pot to boil and then reduce heat, allowing soup to simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, or until rice is cooked. Stir in shrimp, cover, and simmer for another five minutes, until shrimp is fully cooked.

Finding redemption after shopping on autopilot

Do you ever find yourself bumbling through a supermarket on autopilot, not really considering what goes into the shopping cart until you’re unloading it at the cash register?

This is what happens when I shop in zombie mode:

Yup, that’s a ridiculously small portion of dry multi-bean mix. I spotted these beans in the bulk bins a while back and thought it would be a good idea to bring some home for a future soup recipe. The problem is that I wasn’t thinking of how many beans should probably go into this soup, and I only bought about a cup of mixed beans. Ridiculous! Luckily I had plenty of dried pintos and lentils to mix in with the aforementioned sad scoop of beans. Throw the hodge podge into a pot with some veggies and spicy sausage and boom, you’ve got a delicious, filling soup for the masses.

You can prepare dry beans for a recipe like this a couple different ways. One option is to soak the beans in water overnight. What I did, because I forgot to soak my beans, is go with a “quick soak” method by putting the bean mix in a large pot, adding enough water to cover the beans with a couple inches of water, and bringing the pot to a boil. After a couple minutes of rolling boil, you can remove the pot from heat and let the beans sit, uncovered, for an hour before draining. Either method will get you beans that are ready to be cooked. And no matter which method you employ, be sure to rinse the beans prior to soaking and pick out any stones or bad beans.

Bean Bonanza Soup 
2 cups mixed dry beans, soaked, drained and rinsed
32 ounces low-sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon olive oil
28 oz can stewed tomatoes with liquid
2 cups andouille sausage links
1 white onion, diced
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup diced celery
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon dried oregano
Salt and pepper, to taste

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add garlic, onion, carrots, celery,oregano and bay leaves. Sauté for a couple minutes before adding sausage to pot and sautéeing for a couple more minutes. Add tomatoes to the pot, using hands to crush tomatoes. Stir in beans and broth and bring to a boil before reducing heat. Allow pot to simmer, covered, for 30-60 minutes, until beans are tender. Remove bay leaves before serving soup.

Je t'aime Le Creuset

Out of all the wonderful gifts I received this holiday season, one of my favorites is a lovely Le Creuset Dutch oven.

This is some serious kitchen hardware. We’re talking about 7 ¼ quarts of enameled cast-iron wonder. The sky’s the limit as far as what I can cook in this ocean-colored beauty.

I’ve been scouring my cookbooks and the Internet for recipes, but before I get to braising all kinds of other delicious fun I thought I’d ease into it and get to know the Le Creuset by making a big hearty pot of soup.

Hearty Sausage and Kale Soup
14 ounce lean smoked turkey sausage, sliced
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch kale, washed, patted dry and cut into ribbons
9 cups low-sodium chicken broth
28 ounce can diced tomatoes, with juices
2 14.5-ounce cans white beans, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon dried minced onion
1 teaspoon Creole seasoning
3 sprigs rosemary and 2 sprigs oregano, tied together with string
Salt and pepper, to taste

Cook sausage over medium heat in Dutch oven for a couple minutes, until hot. Remove from pot and place in bowl. Warm olive oil in pot and add garlic, cooking for a minute or two and stirring occasionally, until aromatic.
Add broth, tomatoes, Creole seasoning, minced onions, beans, rosemary and oregano. Cover and let cook for at least 30 minutes.
Stir in kale and sausage. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes, until kale is soft. Remove rosemary and oregano before serving soup.

Cooking up something speedy and satisfying while camping

Chris and I bid summer adieu with an Oregon road trip.

We explored our friendly state to the north for more than a week, and spent about half the nights in a tent. Our camping trips together had been on a smaller scale (overnighters in Tahoe) prior to this trip and required minimal meal planning. Once we booked all our lodging, I got to thinking about some outdoor-friendly menus.

When the Nicolaisen family piled into the minivan for camping trips, my mom kept the five of us fed using a Coleman two-burner stove to make huge batches of spaghetti or other one-pot wonders. We also kept milk, meat, cheese and the like in a large hard-sided cooler, something Chris and I didn’t really want to deal with. We just wanted tasty dinners that would be quick and simple to prepare on the two-burner stove on loan from our friend Bill.

For our first night of camping, at Crater Lake, I made chicken burritos. We’d stayed at a hotel in Ashland the night before and hit the grocery store on our way out of town, picking up some pre-cooked chicken breast strips and a green bell pepper. It didn’t take long to get some sizzle from the sliced pepper and chicken strips, flavored with taco seasoning. The meat and peppers, wrapped up in large flour tortillas with some refried black beans and some hot sauce, added some heat to an otherwise chilly night — lows in the 30s, and even some snow on our way out of the park the next morning!

I also picked up some huge Asiago rolls in Ashland, which added some class to cans of clam chowder. Brands like Progresso and Campbell’s even come with pull-top lids, which is quite convenient if you don’t want to pack a can opener with your camping gear.

Pre-cooked chicken sausages (thanks Portland Whole Foods!), sliced and heated up in a frying pan, tasted great when tossed in with some pre-cooked Trader Joe’s multigrain pilaf, a sassy little combo of grains, soybeans, tomato and onion. This dinner took 10 minutes tops to prep.

Instant oatmeal worked well for breakfast. I’d boil a pot of water, using some for the oatmeal, and would also make what I call poor man’s mochas—combine one packet hot cocoa, one packet Starbucks VIA instant coffee and hot water in a mug and stir. The rest of the hot water was dish water.

The morning we headed home, Chris and I resurrected a tradition that dates back many years. We had spent a weekend skiing, and opted to sleep in the back of Chris’ 4Runner in the Kirkwood parking lot, ensuring fresh tracks the next day. Our breakfast of champions that morning was Chef Boyardee Ravioli, heated in the can atop a backpacking stove and paired with frosty Newcastles. This time around I emptied the cans into a pot, and nixed the brews, but, silly and/or appalling as it sounds, the breakfast was delicious. I guess almost everything tastes better when you’re camping!

A trio of must-try locations

Craving classy pub grub?
Give Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery a try the next time you’re in San Francisco. I’m always excited by any place that makes their own sausage, and the night we stopped in there were a handful of different links on the menu (I enjoyed the chicken sausage, served with crispy potatoes), in addition to all kinds of other tempting entrée options. The seven-barrel brewery is located below the pub—their beers have names like Cole Porter and Wit Rabbit.

Headed to California’s Central Coast?
We were in Cambria recently for a friend’s wedding, and decided to delay the 300-mile drive back home by hitting up some Paso Robles wineries. Favorites included Zenaida Cellars, which makes a lot of killer reds, and Niner Wine Estates, which happened to celebrate their grand opening the Sunday we stopped in by pairing wines with some tasty snacks prepared by Trumpet Vine Catering (that’s a crab and mango spring roll paired with Niner’s 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, below). Learn more about Paso Robles wineries here.

Looking for a great brunch in Sacramento?
The next time you roll out of bed with a roaring stomach, head over to Orphan, located on 3440 C St. just a few blocks from McKinley Park. Their food is fresh, simple and fantastic, and their coffee is also amazing. On a recent visit I inhaled corn tamales covered in tomatillo sauce served with eggs (over medium, please), black beans, cilantro, tomatoes and cheese.

Chris thoroughly enjoyed his coconut French toast, which was one of the specials that day. While I’ve only tried Orphan once, their sister spot in Chico, Sin of Cortez, was one of my college dining splurges.

I'm thankful for stuffing

Stuffing is my absolute favorite part of a Thanksgiving feast.

The turkey’s always great, especially with homemade gravy, and mashed potatoes are a given, but stuffing always seems to be that dish that really kicks up the texture and flavor factor.

For the past three years, my family has trusted me with bringing the stuffing, and I haven’t had a bad review yet. I was flattered when my younger sister Lydia — she’s kind of the picky eater of our family — requested I bring the same stuffing I made last year.

Of the many things I’m thankful for (don’t even get me started), at the moment I’m grateful my family liked the stuffing, but also saved me some to bring home.


Sourdough Stuffing with Sausage and Apples
12 cups 1/2 –to-1-inch sourdough bread cubes, crust removed (I bought two sourdough rounds and had just a little to spare)
1 pound sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
3 cups chopped white onion
2 cups chopped celery
2 large Granny Smith (or other tart) apples, peeled and chopped
3 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves, chopped
1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
2-3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
Salt and pepper to taste
Butter

I prefer to cut the sourdough into cubes the day before, letting them get a little stale on cookie sheets set out on the counter.

Heat oven to 350 degrees and bake bread cubes for roughly 15 minutes, giving them time to dry out a little bit. When you take the bread out of the oven, bump the temperature up to 375 degrees.
While the bread is baking, cook sausage in large frying pan until light brown before adding onions and celery. Cook until onions and celery soften slightly, about 5-7 minutes. Stir in apples and cook for another 3-4 minutes before mixing in thyme and poultry seasoning and cooking for another minute or two.
Place baked bread crumbs in a large bowl and toss with sausage mix. Drizzle stuffing mix with chicken broth until you get desired results — two cups wasn’t quite enough for me, and I think three cups was enough to keep the top layer crisp while still retaining a good, moist consistency underneath.
Grease 9-by-13 glass casserole dish with butter and add stuffing mix. Cover it with aluminum foil and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 20-25 minutes to crisp the top.